1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a chip collecting apparatus for a tip dresser for collecting chips generated when dressing electrode tips.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, electrode tips used for spot welding or the like are worn out (or deformed) when welding work is repeated. When welding work is performed with a worn-out electrode tip, welding of desired quality cannot be obtained; accordingly, electrode tips are periodically dressed to maintain welding quality.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 6-122082 discloses a technology for dressing electrode tips in which after the upper and lower surfaces of a dressing body have been tightly pressed by a pair of electrode tips provided at opposed ends of a welding gun, and the welding gun is swung around the central axis of each electrode tip for grinding, thereby dressing the electrode tips.
Generally, copper is often employed for an electrode tip used for spot welding and the like. In order to maintain proper welding quality, as the frequency of grinding is increased, the amount of ground or polished chips of the electrode tip is increased. Accordingly, it is necessary to increase the collection rate of the chips and to effectively recycle them in order to reduce material cost. For this purpose, a chip collection vessel is disposed below a dressing body for collecting chips.
However, it is difficult to efficiently collect all the chips only by disposing the chip collection vessel below the dressing body.
Also, a large number of chip collection vessels are required in order to individually provide the chip collection vessel for each chip dresser. Therefore, material cost increases, which leads to an increase in cost.
Furthermore, when the chips gathered in the chip collection vessel are individually collected in parallel with dressing operation for the electrode tips by the tip dresser, the chips are dropping into the chip collection vessel. Therefore, the chips cannot be collected from the chip collection vessel at that time, thus decreasing productivity.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a chip collecting apparatus for a tip dresser in which the collection rate of chips generated when electrode tips are dressed by polishing or grinding operation can be increased and therefore the rate of recycling can be improved, and also, there is no need to individually dispose a chip collection vessel, thus reducing material cost correspondingly; moreover, the chips can be efficiently collected.
In the chip collecting apparatus for a tip dresser according to the present invention including a tip dresser for dressing the electrode tips by sandwiching and pressurizing both sides of a dressing body with a pair of opposite electrode tips and relatively sliding the dressing body and the pair of electrode tips, a chip discharge port is provided at the bottom of a chip pickup case, which covers the dressing body held in the dresser main body, and the chip discharge port is closed by an openable lid.
With such a configuration, the chip discharge port provided at the bottom of the chip pickup case is normally closed by the lid and the chips generated during dressing operation is deposited at the lower part of the chip pickup case. Then, the lid is opened when the chips are collected and the chips deposited in the chip pickup case is discharged and collected through the chip discharge port.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become more clearly understood from the following description referring to the accompanying drawings.